The Sunday Times legal team plans to counter legal action by the health minister on the grounds that her right to privacy is overridden by the public’s right to know whether she is competent to exercise her duties. At the core of the newspaper’s defence is debate over whether she is fit to hold office in the Cabinet.

Qualified audit opinions for the national Department of Health; only about 44% of people in need of antiretrovirals receiving them; the arrival of extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis; a high number of preventable deaths among newborns: Belinda Beresford assesses the performance of the health minister.

Researchers have called for a debate on mandatory HIV testing for pregnant women and newborn children in South Africa to protect both the mothers and their infants from the ravages of the virus. Two bioethicists say that between 11 000 and 15 000 babies could be protected against HIV each year if there were a 25% increase in the number of pregnant women tested for the virus.

A newly collated Medical Research Council report cites healthcare workers as saying that 20% of the 23 000 newborn babies who die in South Africa each year could probably have been saved. The bombshell report comes against the background of the dismissal of deputy health minister Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge.

South Africa needs about 1 000 doctors in the next 100 days to fill a year-long shortage of medical graduates caused by changes to their training programme. In a neat twist to the normal direction of the medical brain drain, overseas doctors are being lured to South Africa with the promises of a great medical and cultural experience, the chance to make social contributions, fabulous scenery, game parks and beaches.

South Africa has regained its number-one spot as the country with the greatest number of HIV-positive people, after the official estimate of India’s HIV-positive population was more than halved. It is now estimated that 2,47-million people out of India’s more than 1,1-billion population have HIV, down from 5,7-million previously.

International aid group Médecins sans Frontières (MSF) says that a lack of healthcare staff is endangering the lives of millions of people living with HIV/Aids, for whom the drugs are available, but the doctors to prescribe them are not. In a report titled Help Wanted the NGO says that failure to allow nurses to administer antiretroviral (ARV) therapy combined with poor salaries.

Two and a half decades of research have produced increasing returns in combating the HIV/Aids epidemic, with dramatic improvements in treatment and greater awareness of potential ways to stop the spread of the virus. What has not kept pace is the ability to get these medical interventions to people in need. No matter how powerful a drug or a procedure is, it is useless to those who cannot access it.

The Constitutional Court has ordered Independent Democrats leader Patricia de Lille and journalist Charlene Smith to pay damages to three women whose HIV-positive status they revealed in a book without the women’s consent. The three women, identified as NM, SM and LH, were named as having HIV in Smith’s biography of De Lille, published in March 2002.